


Palate Cleanser

by calico_fiction



Series: little cuts [8]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alien Culture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Developing Friendships, Enemies to Friends, Food, Gen, Humor, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Light Angst, Loneliness, Moving On, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 18:49:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19156849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calico_fiction/pseuds/calico_fiction
Summary: Loki is well-adjusted in exactly one (1) way.





	Palate Cleanser

There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason anymore that determines whether Bruce is Bruce or the Hulk. Right now he's Bruce, but if he could figure it out he'd rather be Hulk instead. Hulk wouldn't be bothered by being the only one of his kind on board this ship; Hulk wouldn't care about what's in his food; Hulk isn't lonely. Or if he is, that's for him to deal with and when he's in charge Bruce doesn't have to. Selfish? Definitely. Everyone has flaws.

There are plenty of things that Bruce likes and admires about himself, but they all seem to go pale the longer he's conscious. Next to everything else... He's just surrounded by absence, like the void of space is leaking inside and getting into everything. In the bedding, in the food, the drink, the long empty hallways, the dark when ship's night dims the lights, every passing stranger. He wants to disappear, dissolve away, cease to exist, the same way his old life did. His old relationships.

Bruce is sitting alone in what has been made into the ship's mess hall, swirling half-familiar looking food items around on a sectioned metal tray. There is one thing that looks like some kind of iron-rich plant thing, one thing that would look like rice if it weren't electric blue and translucent, one thing that has the smell and texture of meat but the color of molasses, and one thing that is a thick pale pink batter. Maybe pudding? Bruce cuts his meat item up into tiny pieces and puts a single vegetable on top of each piece, and eats none of them. His thoughts chase each other around and around, each one landing on her briefly before running away again, coming back to her, running away, back to her. He makes a little hole in his pile of blue stuff.

"I heard about you and Romanov," says the last voice Bruce really wants to hear, forcing Bruce's thoughts to stay still right where he doesn't want them. Loki invites himself to join Bruce without further preamble, flipping the skirt of his fancy jacket out behind him as he lowers himself gracefully into the chair across. "Seems an odd pair."

"The best ones usually are," Bruce mutters. With any luck enough recalcitrance will make Loki give up and leave him alone, or at least change the subject. He doubts luck is something one usually gets when dealing with the Trickster God, though. "It didn't work out." There's a brief silence in which Loki eats and watches Bruce move his food around.

"I was betrothed once," he confides, sudden but quiet. He continues when Bruce looks up at him. "Her name was Freyja. She was Vanir. Beautiful, strong, patient."

"What happened?" Bruce asks, intrigued despite himself. Loki shrugs carelessly.

"It didn't work out," he says. "Sometimes it doesn't." Bruce hums thoughtfully. In the ensuing silence, Bruce finally puts a forkful of the rice-like thing into his mouth just to have something to do. It tastes kind of like roe. Not bad. He suddenly becomes aware of how hungry he is and works up the courage to try at least a bite of everything else. The meat tastes like truffles, the vegetables like asparagus, and the pink stuff tastes sweet and herbal. 

"Also," Loki adds suddenly, breaking the not wholly uncomfortable silence like glass, and Bruce knows by now to be suspicious of the way his eyes light up. "She was much younger than me so-"

" _Oh_ ," Bruce interrupts him with a groan. "Come on. Did you make that up just to tease me?"

"Of course not," Loki scoffs, rolling his eyes. "I wouldn't lift a finger for merely a singular purpose." As if to illustrate, Loki does indeed lift his pinky finger as he takes a drink from his mug. He smiles at Bruce like he's a big cat and Bruce is a child who mistook him for something domestic, and then goes right back to eating. Bruce goes back to his food too, ignoring the way his heart rate has picked up - and the fact that Loki didn't actually say he was telling the truth - and focusing instead on the tasty herbal pink stuff. Loki doesn't have any of that on his tray, though he does give Bruce's the occasional wistful sigh. He doesn't seem to care at all if they speak or acknowledge each other, as if he could be sitting across from just anyone, wishing he could have  _their_  pudding. Like it's that easy. Maybe for Norse gods it is. Or maybe it isn't and they, like humans, wish that it could be.

"So what do you do about it?" Bruce wonders after a few more bites.

"Hm?" Loki rotates his fork in the air and idly watches the prongs catch the ugly overhead light. "What do I do about what? Whatever it is, it will almost certainly be much different than what _you_ would do about it." Bruce's mouth curls up at one corner despite himself. That exact reasoning is why Bruce himself has never taken well to advice.

"Freyja," he clarifies anyway. He's more curious about what Loki will say than anything else, really.

"I miss her." Loki answers this time without hesitation. Bruce doubts he was ever unsure what Bruce was asking. "And I live the rest of my life. Concurrently, when given no other option." Bruce is caught off guard by that. He lets himself get captured in Loki's green eyes, held there by their clarity and the way they don't move, the way Loki doesn't blink.

"That's not what I was expecting," Bruce admits, forcing his voice to come out lighter than it feels, blinking hard as a means of escape from whatever look that is on Loki's face. It's something honest, maybe, for once, and it makes Bruce feel a little... itchy, right between the shoulders. "I mean, no offense, but it's just really weird for you to be so well-adjusted." Loki barks out a sharp, stabbing laugh.

"Soak it up while it lasts," he advises wryly. He stretches his mouth out in a grin that looks painful. He keeps showing Bruce his teeth as he takes one last bite of meat, rises, and sweeps away. He passes by Thor on his way out and makes the King stumble with a foot hooked around his ankle, which earns him a glare and a shove. His laugh as he's all but thrown out of view is not exactly softer, per se, but it does at least sound much less like a knife.

Bruce hums thoughtfully to himself, watching distractedly as Thor piles meat and four helpings of pudding onto a tray. Bruce's thoughts go to her, how beautiful she was, how kind, how strong, how broken and how much he wanted to fix her and for her to fix him. He misses her, and he enjoys the rest of his pudding. Concurrently.

**Author's Note:**

> Come chill with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/penlex)!


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